I need some help from some super-long-time veterans. I've noticed an anomaly that I can't explain.
- The patch notes for Issue 1 (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_1) report that Hamidon was increased to level 50.
- The patch notes for Issue 2 (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_2) report that the Eden zone was introduced.
So, um... Where was Hamidon at launch? And how did you get to him?
Well I definitely wasn't around back then, but you got me curious so I went back over the list of patch notes (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Patch_Notes). The notes corresponding to Issue 2's release (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2004-09-16) mention adding The Hollows, The Tunnels of the "Unicorns" (the ones underneath the Hollows), and the four Shadow Shard zones, but say nothing about Eden.
I did find something though. The Crystal Titan Enhancements (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Crystal_Titan_Enhancements) given out in the Eden Trial, which takes place in Eden, are level 40-43. Their page says that "After levels 41-50 were added in Issue 1, they lost much of their value." If that line is accurate then Eden had to have been around before Issue 1, let alone 2. My guess is the line on the Issue 2 page that says Eden was added, is actually supposed to say the unicorn Tunnels.
Edit: Huh... but then a little further down the Issue 2 page under Trials, it mentions adding the Eden Trial. Now I are confused too.
Well, I have my original map from when I bought the game (pre-order) in 2004. On the map, outside Woodvale (then later renamed "Eden") it has a X mark stating "Hamidon Sighting Here" but no zone. I don't know what that means but Hamidon was in existence at Launch. I hope that helps. If I could figure out how to place a picture, I could show you. LOL
My archived copy of the launch client has geobins for both Eden and The Hive. Looks like the wiki was mistaken on that patch note. I don't see the Eden trial map in the launch client, so I'm not sure which update it was patched in on.
I wasn't around at launch, but maps for both Eden and The Hive are in the Issue 0 texMaps.pigg. There are also details for Hamidon in the Issue 0 powers.bin and VillainCostume.bin files. (The Issue 2 notes only say that the Eden Trial was added then.)
It appears to me that Hamidon did exist in-game at launch, but heroes didn't have any way to access it until they reached level 45 and could enter The Hive when the level cap was increased in Issue 1.
It's my understanding that Hamidon was level 40 at launch and raised to 50 with issue 1.
I believe Blondeshell is correct. The zone Hamidon was in was not reachable at launch as the cap was 40 and the Eden zone was 45 to enter.
I know I worked with one of the groups on Champion server to take Hamidon down and we found out the actual formula for what each part does rather than the get 20 Rad defs and win way.
We used the sniper squads, healing blanket, designated tanking rotation and all of that stuff.
Quote from: FlyingCarcass on March 14, 2013, 05:30:29 AM
It's my understanding that Hamidon was level 40 at launch and raised to 50 with issue 1.
I'm *fairly* sure this is correct, but I wasn't actually around until CoV. I'm still waiting for a reply from a couple of my friends who *were* around at launch. But asking questions about launch of these guys is like asking geriatrics what they had for breakfast on April 21, 1988. It may just be lost in the brainmeats.
On reflection, I think I'll just assume that without personal experience (i.e., I was in the game at beta/launch but never so much as visited the Hive in the appropriate time frame) that I'm not qualified to say one way or the other.
Quote from: Ironwolf on March 14, 2013, 02:43:47 PMI know I worked with one of the groups on Champion server to take Hamidon down and we found out the actual formula for what each part does rather than the get 20 Rad defs and win way.
I still think the 'get everyone a Nemesis Staff and have a two-minute Hami Raid' solution, back when it was the person opening the crate and not the mission owner that got the temporary power from the 'Find Source of Freaks' Weapons' mission (and it was a much flashier temp power, being both AoE and doing more damage), was more elegant -- and more fun to laugh about. It reminded me of the question from a modern-day expansion for the 'Call of Cthulhu' pencil-and-paper RPG "Yes, Cthulhu takes minimum damage from normal weapons -- but what
is minimum damage for a 16"/50 shell?"
Oh yeah, I didn't even think to check the Prima guide. Let's see:
QuoteFirst off, the front door has a pair of Level 40 monsters. [...] The Hamidon [...] is in the center of a group of three types of Mitochondria, all level 40 archvillains, with the nucleus being the actual Hamidon. These assistants do not move, can not be pulled solo, and must all be fought as a group. This encounter is designed for twenty or more Level 40 Heroes.
It lists The Hive as being Levels 38+ with level 40-42 monsters. Of course, Prima lists Eden as a level 50 zone with level 33-39 monsters. :roll:
Actually - you used to be able to access it from Creys! I had forgotten. They closed it after the level 50 cap rise I believe. Man the things you forget after 9 years.
Yes, at opening the trial was broken I think but was at level 40 and then at level cap rise they closed Creys and the only door was through 45+ Eden.
My memory tells me that the door from Crey's Folly actually went into the Rikti Crash Site, which was then closed after it was converted to the Rikti War Zone in Issue 10.
Quote from: Blondeshell on March 14, 2013, 08:06:24 PM
My memory tells me that the door from Crey's Folly actually went into the Rikti Crash Site, which was then closed after it was converted to the Rikti War Zone in Issue 10.
This is correct.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/RCS
Man, I am losing it already!
Quick get this game back before I forget that Talos was holding the world up...........errr
Here's an archived copy of the Issue 2 Overview Page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040806185508/http://www.cityofheroes.com/features_update2.html
It does not mention adding Eden the zone, just the Eden Trial. Also, considering Eden is where the Numina TF ends, I think it's safe to say Eden was there at launch.
Quote from: Dale-Man on March 15, 2013, 06:38:15 AM
Here's an archived copy of the Issue 2 Overview Page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040806185508/http://www.cityofheroes.com/features_update2.html
It does not mention adding Eden the zone, just the Eden Trial. Also, considering Eden is where the Numina TF ends, I think it's safe to say Eden was there at launch.
Oh wow...i just realized that the old coh site is archived way back to 2001...i am getting such a trip looking back on the old pages and info. This is so awesome.
You have to remember at launch many of the TF's were broken.
Positron TF was an absolute mess at launch, I tried it the first weekend and we gave up in the first mission after an hour. So many things were a mess - in Crey's there was one spot where bees would spawn and you could put fireball on auto as a blaster and just spam your way from 35 to 40 without moving.
They didn't have auto logoff either and so a lot of cheats were working in similar fashion.
I was around at launch, but I was also extremely young. Like (6th?) grade I believe. So I wasn't particularly interested in leveling quickly, and was more interested in "try every single powerset!" Unsurprisingly, I didn't reach level 50 until about two years later. :P
So I can tell you lots of things about Atlas Park and Galaxy City, but that's about it ;)
If I remember correctly, from stories from SG mates that had been around since launch, Hami was originally in Eden in 'The Hive' area. But raids constantly crashed the zone, hence why The Hive zone was created.
I was there at launch, Hami was in "The Hive" and you get there through "Eden", I wasn't a lvl 50 but I had "phase shift" and nothing could hurt you as long as you had endurance, but they nerfed it since. It was a scary looking place with all the giant monsters all around and Hami was in the middle of the zone, I remember groups and groups of heroes standing on tall rocks waiting to have enough people to try and take Hami down. It was soo many people there that everything looked like it was standing still, not only you had to fight Hami but you had to fight the giant monsters that got aggroed. It took forever to kill Hami, people got DCed, it's like looking at your screen saver for two or more hours, if you asked me I hated it because I could have hit level 50 with as much time it took to kill Hami. The only trial that gave you a drop like in Hami, was the abandon sewer trial, and I can't tell you as of today the one I hated the most.
Oh, another thing, when you go through "Eden", all the way to the back, there was a giant gate that looked like all the other gates but it looked like their was a rock slide and the gate was almost closed with rocks blocking it. But you can still go through it, I'm thinking people saw that it looked blocked and didn't even try to go in. There wasn't a trial you had to do to get to Hami, but if someone saw that Hami was up they broadcast it to level 50's.
Quote from: Gentlewolf on March 25, 2013, 12:51:34 AM
I was there at launch, Hami was in "The Hive" and you get there through "Eden", I wasn't a lvl 50 but I had "phase shift" and nothing could hurt you as long as you had endurance, but they nerfed it since. It was a scary looking place with all the giant monsters all around and Hami was in the middle of the zone, I remember groups and groups of heroes standing on tall rocks waiting to have enough people to try and take Hami down. It was soo many people there that everything looked like it was standing still, not only you had to fight Hami but you had to fight the giant monsters that got aggroed. It took forever to kill Hami, people got DCed, it's like looking at your screen saver for two or more hours, if you asked me I hated it because I could have hit level 50 with as much time it took to kill Hami. The only trial that gave you a drop like in Hami, was the abandon sewer trial, and I can't tell you as of today the one I hated the most.
You may have been there at launch, but obviously that wasn't when you went to see Hamidon since the level cap wasn't raised to 50 until after Issue 1 went live. That said i have no idea where Hamidon was prior to Issue 1 since i didn't get any alts above the twenties or so until after Issue 2 or 3 went live due to altitus, which was well below Eden's minimum level to enter. At the time that Issue 1 was on the test server all i did was go and look at PI on my mid-20s Scrapper. IIRC Hamidon wasn't defeated for the first time until well after Issue 1 went live anyway, but there were earlier attempts that didn't succeed. i do recall reading that Hamidon and his monsters were originally level 40 until Issue 1 went live, but not where he was located at that point.
Edit: The CoH wiki section on Special Enhancements (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Special_Enhancements) does mention the original level 40 cap, but any info on Hamidon before Issue 1 is now hard to find. As i recall some of the guides on the official boards used to go into more detail, but are no longer to be found.
Edit 2: The Issue 1 (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Issue_1) overview on the Paragon Wiki mentions that the two new zones added were Peregrine Island and the Rikti Crash Site, so it appears that The Hive was in fact in the game at launch.
First off like I said "I wasn't a level 50, but I did have "phase shift", at that time phase shift was a toggle and at that time you can phase through jail doors if you was locked in a jail like on some missions. I didn't noticed what level Hami or the Giant Monsters was because that wasn't important to me at that moment. All I know that if I didn't have my phase shift, that I would be dead before I even got to Hami even if I flew with all the swarms up in the air. And when you did die in Eden or The Hive, you spawned in a hospital in FF at that time, sorry I wasn't spending time looking up wiki, I was playing the game. I don't mean any disrespect I just remember fun and scary things, oh yeah and after beta they let us keep the same toons that we was playing when we was in beta when it went live ,we also got a prestige power too. My toon was a level 40 something, maybe if I look hard enough I can find a screen shot of my toon "Roach-man".
Quote from: Gentlewolf on March 25, 2013, 02:05:10 AM
First off like I said "I wasn't a level 50, but I did have "phase shift", at that time phase shift was a toggle and at that time you can phase through jail doors if you was locked in a jail like on some missions. I didn't noticed what level Hami or the Giant Monsters was because that wasn't important to me at that moment. All I know that if I didn't have my phase shift, that I would be dead before I even got to Hami even if I flew with all the swarms up in the air. And when you did die in Eden or The Hive, you spawned in a hospital in FF at that time, sorry I wasn't spending time looking up wiki, I was playing the game. I don't mean any disrespect I just remember fun and scary things, oh yeah and after beta they let us keep the same toons that we was playing when we was in beta when it went live ,we also got a prestige power too. My toon was a level 40 something, maybe if I look hard enough I can find a screen shot of my toon "Roach-man".
That's fine. i was just interested in addressing the questions raised in this thread about Hamidon, and your posts weren't all that clear on the details that people were actually inquiring about. Although i do fail to see how not looking up a wiki that didn't exist at launch in 2004 presumably while playing then was relevant either. Unless you mean your previous posts in this thread were made while playing CoH today? *confused*
i didn't look up any wikis in May 2004 when i started playing either, but i did see what i could find for replying to this thread today with relevant info... Still, thanks for confirming what i vaguely recalled about Hamidon at launch, sort of. Since you made mention of needing a 50 to participate and those didn't exist at launch it made it very unclear whether you were describing Hamidon at launch or after Issue 1, so it's nice to get that cleared up.
Cheers!
Okay I'll clear it up some,.. when I first went to "The Hive" my "Roach-man" was a level 40 something inv/ss tanker, the only reason why I was in dangerous areas is because I couldn't be touched (phase shift). I was just being nosey and was just looking around, no one was in the zone but me at that time ( I'm sure I wasn't the first ). Months later past and I made another toon since then a rad/rad defender called "Tactical-Nuke", he was a level 50 and thats the toon I did my first Hami raid with, thats all I got.
Quote from: Gentlewolf on March 25, 2013, 04:01:09 AM
Okay I'll clear it up some,.. when I first went to "The Hive" my "Roach-man" was a level 40 something inv/ss tanker, ....
If he was "40-something" that is after the timeframe we are looking for. We're looking for how players got to Hamidon when the level cap was 40. Thanks for the thought, but we need earlier evidence.
Second-hand conjecture so far shows it was a level 40 encounter that was bumped to 50 alongside the level cap.
I was around at launch and there was Eden and the hive. I never went in so I can't say if there was Hamidon. I don't remember there being HO's though at launch but that may be because no one got to that point yet. You got it to it the same way through Creys Folly. Same with RWZ before it became its own new zone.
It was quite a while before the Radiation crew took Hamidon down. I know we were also trying using various methods on Champion.
Iwas well after the level cap bump to 50 before it was defeated.
I dont recall anyone killing hami before issue 2, possibly 3, but I didnt know much about servers other than Justice at the time, I could be wrong. As far as I ever knew at that time, Hami was level 40 originally, as was everything in the Hive.
The entire Hamidon encounter was badly broken until Issue 5 or 6ish. When he was defeated he would drop the Hami O's on the GROUND - you would then pickup as many as you liked! It totally borked the reward and was a wonderful griefing mechanism.
You let everyone else fight Hamidon and then jump in and click on as many glowies as you can.
I got one from this way and actually gave it away. One poor bugger had died 25-30 times and for nought.
Glowies?
I remember the itty-bitty buds that spawned and had to be taken out to get HOs, but I don't recall glowies. (Mini-buds were later modified to give out SOs instead of HOs when the reward system was tweaked in March of 2005.)
Quote from: eabrace on March 26, 2013, 04:48:40 PMGlowies?
I remember the itty-bitty buds that spawned and had to be taken out to get HOs, but I don't recall glowies. (Mini-buds were later modified to give out SOs instead of HOs when the reward system was tweaked in March of 2005.)
This was what I remember from the earliest Hamidon raids I did -- Hamidon would be defeated, and he'd spawn one Hamidon Bud for each character in the zone (which would meander off slowly in random directions), and whoever got the defeat credit for a Hamidon Bud would get a Hami-O. This caused all sorts of griefing, as the Fire-based characters with their AoE attacks could spam their AoEs to get defeats on multiple Hamidon Buds, leaving other players -- typically the Controllers and Defenders, who didn't have high-damaging attacks -- to get none. It was this inequity that caused the revision of the reward system to award a random Hami-O to any character that had
damaged Hamidon during the raid; the drop from the Hamidon Buds was reworked to level-50 SOs, and soon after the Hamidon buds were eliminated entirely.
Quote from: FlyingCarcass on March 14, 2013, 05:30:29 AM
It's my understanding that Hamidon was level 40 at launch and raised to 50 with issue 1.
That sounds about right. as I recall there was a level cap at 40 for launch. I never hit it. they raised it to 50 by the time I got close.
Quote from: eabrace on March 26, 2013, 04:48:40 PM
Glowies?
I remember the itty-bitty buds that spawned and had to be taken out to get HOs, but I don't recall glowies. (Mini-buds were later modified to give out SOs instead of HOs when the reward system was tweaked in March of 2005.)
Sorry, I call most things in the game you have to click to get rewards glowies. Seeing half of the people who finally defeated Hamidon not getting a reward just sickened me.
Quote from: Ironwolf on March 28, 2013, 02:19:50 PM
Sorry, I call most things in the game you have to click to get rewards glowies. Seeing half of the people who finally defeated Hamidon not getting a reward just sickened me.
Fair enough. And I agree with that sentiment. I was pretty happy to see the new reward table when they implemented that and made it possible for everyone to get the reward.